Coe himself has said in a recent interview that “the prose I write is very rarely poetic” and that he “regards it as a positive” that his books are easy to read – and without the inventiveness of “What A Carve Up” that straightforwardness is starker here and perhaps a little in contrast to much of the literary fiction I normally enjoy. The writing though does remain engaging and enjoyable. Coe's interwoven paeans to the lives of those rooted in the very centre of the UK - The Rotter's Club and Middle England among them - blend comedy, tragedy and social commentary in enjoyably memorable fashion, and his latest, Bournville, is no exception . . . Coe's particular gift is to understand how nostalgia, regret and an apprehension of what the future will bring might make us more, not less, empathetic to the frailties of those around us * FT, Best Audiobooks of the Year * Many members of the Lamb family figure prominently and we follow quite a few life-stories, but the anchoring figure is Mary Lamb -- "based closely", Coe admits, on his own mother (while he claims there is no connection between his and the rest of the Lamb family). At heart Bournville is a novel designed to make you think by making you laugh, and the seriousness of the subject matter is tempered throughout by the author's piercing eye for the more ludicrous elements of human nature * New Statesman * Coe's interwoven paeans to the lives of those rooted in the very centre of the UK - The Rotter's Club and Middle England among them - blend comedy, tragedy and social commentary in enjoyably memorable fashion, and his latest, Bournville, is no exception . . . Coe's particular gift is to understand how nostalgia, regret and an apprehension of what the future will bring might make us more, not less, empathetic to the frailties of those around us FT, Best Audiobooks of the Year

At heart Bournville is a novel designed to make you think by making you laugh, and the seriousness of the subject matter is tempered throughout by the author's piercing eye for the more ludicrous elements of human nature New Statesman Coe has long been interested in both music and literature. In the mid-1980s he played with a band (The Peer Group) and tried to get a recording of his music. He also wrote songs and played keyboards for a short-lived feminist cabaret group, Wanda and the Willy Warmers. [2] Jonathan Coe’s only regret must be that the book had gone to press before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Which members of the Lamb family would have spent 48 hours in the queue to see her lying in state, and which would have sympathised with those arrested for anti-royalist activism? We may need a sequel – and, given the pace of British politics, we may need it very soon. Honorary degrees: DLitt, University of Birmingham (2006); [17] DLitt, University of Wolverhampton (2006); [18] DUniv, Birmingham City University. [19] This is another eminently readable Coe, full of believable characters and fizzing dialogue. And it couldn't be more timely * Big Issue *

Honorary Graduates of Birmingham City University". Birmingham City University. Archived from the original on 27 August 2018 . Retrieved 28 January 2015.

I have previously read two of Jonathan Coe’s novels – his 1994 “What A Carve Up” and 2015 part-sequel “Number 11” – both very readable and enjoyable (if rather didactic and over-preaching to the converted) social satires drawing on English farce and (more oddly) spoof horror movies – the first novel in particular also surprisingly formally inventive. Coe wrote the sleevenotes "Reflections on The High Llamas" for the 2003 compilation of The High Llamas Retrospective, Rarities and Instrumentals. He has also written lyrics for songs on the albums My Favourite Part of You and The Wonder of It All by Louis Philippe, and Earth to Ether by Theo Travis, for which the vocalist was Richard Sinclair. There is much to enjoy here, as in all Coe's novels . . . an intelligent criticism of our shared history since 1945 Scotsman Jonathan Coe FRSL ( / k oʊ/; born 19 August 1961) is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! (1994) reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name. It is set within the "carve up" of the UK's resources that was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governments of the 1980s. Writers have to believe their stories or they won't be able to write them well, or at all. It looks like Coe simply couldn't believe Bournville enough, so he hashed together some odds and ends he had already laying about, filled in the holes with some silicon and called it a novel.It will be another twenty-one years before the next Anglo-German episode occurs. Mary has married Geoffrey, Carl’s grandson, and they have three boys. Their German cousins visit England for the first time that we know of, to attend the World Cup in 1966, played in England. The Germans are confident that Germany will win, the English less confident that England will win. However there are clashes between the two sets of cousins not only over football but over the relative quality of their national chocolate and over the war, resulting in a fight. Coe. Σε τελική ανάλυση, τι ακριβώς είναι σαν βιβλίο; Είναι μια σχετικά ευχάριστη μίνι οικογενειακή σάγκα, με επίκεντρο την αξέχαστη Μαίρη -εμπνευσμένη από την ίδια τη μητέρα του Jonathan Coe- η οποία κάνει την πρώτη της εμφάνιση τη μέρα της νίκης ��το μικρό της χωριό και αντέχει μέχρι… σχεδόν το τέλος του βιβλίου. Τη βλέπουμε σαν 11χρονη, στο τέλος του 2ου Παγκοσμίο Πολέμο, την ακολουθούμε καθώς μεγαλώνει, βρίσκει φλερτ αγάπη και δουλειά, κάνει επιλογή συζύγου (αν και αργότερα της ξεφεύγει πως ίσως ήταν λάθος) και έχει μια… βρετανικά φυσιολογική ζωή. Οι φάσεις της ζωής της που επιλέγει να φωτίσει ο συγγραφέας είναι κάθε περίπου 10 χρόνια, σε ξεχωριστές βρετανικές στιγμές που έχουμε ήδη αναφέρει), δίνοντας χρόνο στην οικογένεια και στη βρετανική κοινωνία κάθε φορά να έχουν αλλάξει τόσο ώστε να αξίζει ν�� επανεκτεθούν στο φακό του Coe. The book also builds a deeper integrity out of echoes and motifs, like a piece of music. The phrase “all that caper”, a particular corner of a Birmingham pub, a yellow cravat, a line of Latin verse, the sound of laughter in a school playground – all set off chains of associations that ripple throughout the novel. A piece of casual homophobia will be recalled decades later by a son trying to come to terms with his sexual orientation. When Mary and Geoffrey get engaged, Geoffrey still feels some anxiety, knowing: "he would never quite feel sure of her until the vows were spoken and the wedding ring was on her finger", and she does, in fact, have another suitor; this possibility of how everything could have been different in just slightly different circumstances also hangs nicely over the novel. B ournville, we learn from Jonathan Coe’s notes at the end of the novel, is the fourth in a planned quintet he’s writing under the general title of Unrest. This book also overlaps with the trilogy that began with The Rotter s’ Club and continued with The Closed Circleand the Costa award-winning Middle England. All these interweaving plotlines, all the reappearing names, events and, above all, places give the impression of an author whose work is driven by an almost obsessive need to take new perspectives on the past (and its role in shaping the present), to rehearse and re-rehearse foundation myths both personal and national.

The choice of broadcasts mostly relate to the royal family. Secondarily, some type of war, be it a hot one (WW2) or a vaguely friendly one (international football). For all the novel's satirical tang and historical sweep, it's at root a tender portrait of apparently simple folk trying to fathom the mystery of their own personalities * Spectator * The name of a village not just founded upon, and devoted to, but actually dreamed into being by chocolate. Coe has the great gift of combining engaging human stories with a deeper structural pattern that gives the book its heft * Guardian * Everything changes, and everything stays the same. That is the overriding mantra of John Coe’s latest book, which tells a nation’s story through generations of the same family. It’s ambitious, it’s clever, and it works!

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Bournville is Jonathan Coe's most ambitious novel yet . . . a novel about people and place. Entertaining and often poignant, it presents a captivating portrait of how Britons lived then and the way they live now Economist She will have three sons and two of them will have children and THOSE children will have children and, in the meantime, things will inexorably change. Even here in the former colonies, the seven events that shape this novel – VE Day, Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, the World Cup Final, the investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales, the wedding of Charles and Diana, Diana’s funeral, and the 75th anniversary of VE Day – spark emotions. It is miraculous how, in his new novel, Coe has created a social history of postwar Britain as we are still living it. Bournville is a beautiful, and often very funny, tribute to an underexamined place and also a truly moving story of how a country discovered tolerance' Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of Empireland Bournville έχει φτιαχτεί για να στεγάσει τους εργάτες της Cadbury), με νοσταλγικές και πραγματιστικές νότες παράλληλα, την προσθήκη φυτικού λίπους στις βρετανικές σοκολάτες εν καιρώ πολέμου λόγω ελλείψεων και την μάχη στην Ευρώπη για το αν οι εγγλέζικες σοκολάτες μπορούν να θεωρηθούν «σοκολάτες» ή αν πρέπει να τους αποδοθεί άλλο όνομα (και πώς γράφεται το όνομα "Παπασταθόπουλος"). Μέσα σε αυτό το χαμό, μαθαίνουμε και για την πρώτη αποτυχημένη υποψηφιότητα (καταδικασμένη a priori, στην πραγματικότητα) του Μπόρις, σε έναν παραδοσιακά "εργατικό" δήμο, όπου δε θα είχε καμία τύχη (κι ��μως, το τόλμησε). Εδώ διαφαίνεται ένας θαυμασμός ή έστω μια εκτίμηση του συγγραφέα για τον πολιτικό, που όμως σε άλλα σημεία του βιβλίου αντικαθίσταται από σαρκασμό και την αίσθηση ότι είναι τραγικό ένας τέτοιος χαρακτήρας να είναι υπεύθυνος την εποχή του covid. Φυσικά, υπάρχει μια (μη) αποποίηση ευθύνης του συγγραφέα, όταν δηλώνει για τον Μπόρις ότι «Μπορεί, φυσικά, να φαίνεται οικείος σε ορισμένους αναγνώστες…». Ναι, μας φάνηκε!